About Andrew Cusack
Writer, web designer, etc.; born in New York; educated in Argentina, Scotland, and South Africa; now based in London. read more
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The Neue Galerie
THE RECENT PURCHASE for the Neue Galerie of Gustav Klimt’s 1907 ‘Adele Bloch-Bauer I’ (above), alledgedly for a record-breaking price of $135,000,000, gives me the perfect opportunity to write a post on the eponymously recent addition to New York’s coterie of art museums. Since its 2001 opening, the Neue Galerie has resided in the handsome 1914 beaux-arts mansion on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 86th Street, designed by Carrère and Hastings (of New York Public Library fame) for industrialist William Starr Miller and later inhabited by Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt III. In the time since the construction of No. 1048, the rest of Fifth Avenue has undergone a lamentable transformation from a boulevard of beautiful townhouses and mansions to an avenue predominantly consisting of apartment buildings. While one appreciates the inoffensive design of the pre-war buildings on Fifth, there remain a number of thoroughly opprobrious modern interlopers which offend the graceful avenue. One can’t help but pine for Fifth Avenue before the mansions came down, but we can at least give thanks for holdouts like the Neue Galerie.
The Vanderbilts sold the home to the Astors in 1940, and in turn the Astors sold 1048 Fifth Avenue to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Founded in 1925 as the Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut in Berlin, the YIVO was responsible for most early orthographic and lexicographic work on the Yiddish language. Though originally based in Vilnius after its foundation in Berlin, the combined Nazi-Soviet invasions of Eastern Europe forced the Institute to flee, centering their operations in New York and Buenos Aires. Much of the YIVO Institute’s massive archives was carted to Berlin by the Nazis and managed to survive the war, moving to New York after the end of hostilities. A large portion, however, had lain dormant and forgotten in a Lithuanian records building (a converted Catholic Church, actually) until rediscovered in 1989 and eventually returned to the YIVO in New York.
The YIVO Institute, however, found itself somewhat cash-strapped faced with repatriating the rediscovered Vilnius trove to New York. In response, the Institute sold the air rights to 1048 Fifth to a company which was redeveloping the old Adams Hotel next door at 2 East 86th Street. The President of the Borough of Manhattan then granted the developers’ request to redesignate 2 East 86th Street as 1049 Fifth Avenue, adding a chunk of value to the new apartments while infuriating address purists. After cashing in on the unused air rights, YIVO sold 1048 itself and moved to a more capacious abode. The building was bought by Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky in 1994, who together conceived the Neue Galerie as a museum for German and Austrian art, almost entirely of the Expressionist school.
With the death of Serge Sabarsky in 1996, Ronald S. Lauder took the helm as the driving force behind the newest addition to Fifth Avenue’s Museum Mile. The Neue Galerie hired German-born architect and designer Annabelle Selldorf to redesign the interiors before the opening exhibition in 2001, a task which was accomplished with taste and modernity, while keeping an eye towards preservation.
Austrian chef Kurt Gutenbrunner was brought in to run the Café Sabarsky in one of the main rooms on the museum’s ground floor. (The less-crowded Café Fledermaus can be found in the basement, with the same menu as upstairs).
The museum wisely admits only three-hundred and fifty viewers at a time, at the price of $15 for adults and $10 for students and the elderly. Normally closed to the general public on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the management of the Neue Galerie had considered charging $50 per person for semi-private admittance on Wednesdays, but when a maelstrom erupted after the word got out, the plan was quietly placed to the side.
As with the purchase of Klimt’s ‘Adele Bloch-Bauer I’, which Lauder has described as “Our Mona Lisa”, the Neue Gallerie’s collection continues to expand, and the institution has quite the prodigious benefactor in Mr. Lauder. We hope, however, that it remains a small museum, on the human scale which makes its home at the corner of Fifth and 86th so appropriate. The building which once housed the wealthy today is home to priceless works of art which, though of foreign origin, New York must be proud to call its own.
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The breadth of your knowledge astounds me.
Bah, it’s all just public information. All I do is present it.
Then your ability to present it astounds me. Honestly, where do you find the time? I must applaud you for all your efforts and for your initiative.
Mr. Cusack,
I’m afraid your unfortunate return to your native state (and mine) has not provided the same stimulating material as your adventures in Scotland.
I suggest it’s either time for grad school…or a post on McSorley’s.
In spite of our disagreements about Peter Simple and General Franco, it is posts such as these that make visiting your site a pleasure. Bravo, Andrew.
Matt Bell is always of the very same opinion. He told me he hates how my site gets “all weirdlike” during the summer when I am cut off from humanity.
Alas, I remain a gentleman at leisure (rather than employ), which means a certain penury prevents the enjoyment of raucous evenings and the undertaking of convivial endeavours of the sort which you, and others, no doubt pine to hear of. I sometimes wonder if my friends (and fellow travellers such as yourself) preferred me to be some sort of gossip columnist.
Of course, on the rare occasions these days when I am social the conversation is usually of such an animating nature as to be virtually unpublishable on a site which suffers the lack of pseudonymity.
Grad school is most definitely out of the question (leave the higher degrees to academe and the clergy), and McSorley’s, I am reliably informed, is full of gawping tourists these days.
I visited the Neue a few years ago; an excellent collection of paintings and furniture including – if you’ll pardon my alliteration – some shocking Schieles. However, at the time the cafe disappointed. Over priced and under cooked Austrian fare. A nice room, tho’, in which to feel disappointed, I’ll admit.
I discovered your site on a search for info about thecurrent Klimpt showat the Neue Gallery. I sent thelink to my daughter in Berlin as we’ll see it together when she visits NYC in May.
Then I noticed the Buenos Aires section and enjoyed the great pictures and stories. I’m an avid tango dancer and spent two fantastic weeks there in October of 2004. I love B.A.
Thanks for all this info and add me to your mailing list.
Abrazos,
Tom